Why just one queen? Why not try a two queen hive?
Traditional bee keeping says there can only be one queen in each hive. I disagree! Quite the opposite in fact, a two queen hive means more eggs and more bees. While biology says there can only be one queen and when more than one exists in a single hive they fight to the death. Nature assumes the strong and therefore better queen will survive and be best for the hive.
The trick is to keep the queens separated so they can not kill each other! Bee keepers have been doing it for a long time for various reasons. Our reason is bee production that leads to honey production.
Why you need more than one queen
The first one, as stated above, is bee production. Think about it! On average a queen lays 1600 eggs a day, but the hive loses 500-600 bees for various reasons. So during peak season the hive grows on average about 1000 bees a day. If you had a two queen hive, it would gain on average 2000 bees a day. Basically it would double the foraging and collecting workforce of the hive.
The second one is protection against queen loss. While the hive can successfully re-queen itself, that takes time. Like 3 to 4 weeks time before she is hatched, mated, and laying again. What? At a 1000 bees a day average, your hive would lose a minimum of 21000 works (1000 * 3 weeks or 21 days) while waiting for a new queen. This can still happen in the two queen hive, but if you lose the one queen the other queen is still laying.
Problems to be avoided
The main concern is you need to keep the queens separate. Enter the queen excluder! This little device is normally used to keep the queen out of the honey super so she doesn’t lay any eggs in your nice fresh honey. We are going to use it to keep the two divas separate and from killing each other.
The other problem is introducing the two hives to each other. New bees to a hive will also try to kill a “competing” queen. Enter the newspaper combine! This is a technique where by the two colonies are separated by a layer of newspaper at first, allowing them time to get used to the pheromones of the other queen. By the time they chew through the newspaper and meet each other, all is good.
Two Queen Hive Setups
There are two commonly accepted setups for two queen hives. Like I said, this is not my original idea, I just want to take it to the next level and that will come later.
Horizontal hive placement or side by side. The two hives are set right next to each other with entrances pointed in opposite directions. A queen excluder is placed on the center of the two hives and then the honey super is centered over the excluder. It looks like a mini pyramid, check it out on google here – horizontal hive setup. This requires a couple of special half hive covers to go over the top of the hives where the honey super doesn’t cover the frames. The problem with this setup is the possibility of rain and other nasties getting into the hive between the half covers and the honey super. In addition, it wont fit on a hive stand built for a single box.
Vertical hive placement or up and down. In this setup the first hive is setup normally. Then a queen excluder, then a honey super, followed by another queen excluder, and finally the second hive boxes. It creates a large tower of hive boxes. Again see the search for examples of this setup – vertical hive setup. It is critical in this setup to have at least one honey super between the queen excluders. Otherwise, one queen can still reach and kill the other queen through a single excluder.
Two Queen Hive Hack
What I would like to propose is an actual two queen hive. In a single box, separated of course. If you take single 10 frame deep langstroth hive box and place a separator board in the middle, you will create two 5 frame nuc boxes. Why would we do this? Good question, because the bees on each side can build comb quickly filling the box. The ideal setup is three deep boxes of this design, then an excluder and on top honey supers. You will need to create an entrance on opposite sides to each mini-hive. That gives each queen enough room to lay eggs (15 frames each), but forces the foragers to start storing honey above the excluder sooner. Like 5 frame sooner that a normal single queen, double deep hive setup using 20 frames.
In addition, this configuration has the benefit of allowing the colonies to share heat and winter better.
Variation
One variation of this setup I have yet to try is building a super-duper honey super box. By that I mean, using the normal two queen hive horizontal setup. Then instead of centering a honey super over both boxes, I would build a box large enough to cover both hives. This idea has a lot of extra issues, like the need for a larger cover, the use of two queen excluders, the shear weight of such a box full of honey.
Another variation would be to use a screen divider between the two sides of the hive. I would think it would have to be very small screen or maybe double layered to keep the queens separate. This setup would allow for very even distribution of the two queen’s pheromones and hopefully encourage more nurse bee sharing to raise brood.
All problems to solve another day and another hack!
Conclusion
Our first hive hack only used one queen and added the workers artificially through packages and swarms. This new hive hack is focused on the using two queens in a single hive to double the honey collection workforce in the same footprint of a normal size hive.
Please comment below with your thoughts on this hack, problems, variations, etc. Thanks for checking out the site!